SOURCE: "The Rise of Alcibiades," in Timon of Athens: Shakespeare's Pessimistic Tragedy, Ohio State University Press, 1979, pp. 50-63.

In the following essay, Soellner analyzes the ambiguous character of Alcibiades, maintaining that his "credentials as champion of good against evil are weakened by his lax morality and excessive flexibility."

Alcibiades is a puzzling character; the question is whether he is so owing to design or to the unsatisfactory state of the text. Critics frequently think him not fully developed. As H. J. Oliver says, [in his introduction to the Arden edition of Timon of Athens (1959)], "It would be easy to compile an anthology of contradictory remarks about Alcibiades, and their very number is no doubt some indication that Shakespeare has not made his intention perfectly clear." But we must not take contradictory critical responses to a Shakespearean character as indications that the character is unsatisfactory. Most major and many...